GOP candidates make their pitch in Greenville
Usually, the entertainment at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena is a musical concert or an ice hockey game.
Friday, it was all political theater.
Thousands of conservatives watched 10 Republican presidential candidates perform, while about 150 news media personnel were on hand to write the reviews.
An 11th candidate, frontrunner Donald Trump, had appeared on the billing, but his campaign announced several hours before showtime that he wouldn’t attend after all because of a “significant business transaction that was expected to close Thursday.”
That was disappointing to Lisa Murray of Taylors, the first person in line at the arena, who said she came to see the New York billionaire.
The 56-year-old former Michelin tire builder said she’s voting for Trump because, “Somebody strong is going to have to fix the mess we’re in.”
But after Trump begged out, Murray said she was wondering, “Why does it take so long to make a business deal?”
Trump’s campaign didn’t elaborate on the reason for his absence but promised in a statement that he would keep a scheduled appearance in Columbia on Wednesday for a town hall with U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
The candidates who did attend Greenville’s second forum for presidential candidates in four months were former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Susan Coster, 65, arrived wearing a Jeb Bush sticker on her shirt and carrying a Jeb Bush sign.
The retiree from Piedmont said she hadn’t decided who will get her vote in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary on Feb. 20, but that she’s “leaning way toward Jeb.”
“If somebody comes up with something just fabulous for our military, making us stronger, then I might lean another way, but I really like Jeb,” Coster said.
“I like his family values. I like the stance he’s taken on the military, on healthcare, on immigration status, and I think it’s a plus that he speaks Spanish,” she said.
As for Trump, Costner said she thinks he’s “just a showman.”
“He has no experience with foreign policy, and we need someone with strong foreign policy because we haven’t had it.”
The forum was organized by Heritage Action, a conservative group out of Washington, D.C.
The candidates were asked questions by Gov. Nikki Haley and Michael Needham, Heritage Action’s chief executive, as well as conservative activists the group designates as “Sentinels.” Other questions were sent in over social media.
The questions covered a wide range of issues from Planned Parenthood and immigration, to entitlement reform and the nuclear deal with Iran.
Stump speeches weren’t allowed, but candidate answers sounded a lot like stump speeches in many cases.
Former Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville, now president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and sister organization to Heritage Action, made an appearance but didn’t ask questions.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ohio Gov. John Kasich declined invitations, while South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore and former New York Gov. George Pataki didn’t meet Heritage Action’s requirement that participants have at least 1 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll average for August.
Heritage Action said the event was sold out, with more than 10,000 people registered, but many seats were empty in the arena’s upper reaches.
Stars and stripes on the main stage were illuminated by red, blue and white lights, but different colors waved on a sidewalk outside.
About 50 people carried Confederate flags in front of the arena to protest Gov. Nikki Haley’s recent successful call for the Legislature to remove the rebel banner from a monument on the Statehouse grounds in Columbia.
Charles Lunsford, a spokesman for Save Southern Heritage, the group that organized the protest, said Haley had “destroyed a very carefully crafted compromise from 2000,” referring to the deal struck 15 years ago to bring the Confederate flag down from atop the Statehouse dome.
“A lot of people love Southern heritage,” Lunsford said. “They’re not ashamed of it or embarrassed by it. We expect our politicians to understand that.”
Haley spokesman Rod Godfrey didn’t immediately offer a response to Lunsford’s comments.
One policy difference among candidates that emerged during the forum is whether to restore the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal lending agency that the Republican-led Congress allowed to go out of business at the end of June.
The issue made news in South Carolina earlier this week when GE said it plans to put 400 jobs in France instead of at its power turbine plant in Greenville and two other U.S. locations because Congress didn’t re-authorize the bank.
GE said it needed to include export financing of the kind formerly provided by the bank in order to bid on billions of dollars’ worth of work to make power turbines and generators for various foreign countries.
GE said it couldn’t get the export financing in the United States now that the Ex-Im Bank is out of business, so it turned to the bank’s equivalent in France to obtain a line of credit for the global power projects.
As a result, GE said it is required to put 400 jobs it expects to create, if it wins the business, in France instead of in Greenville; Schenectady, New York; and Bangor, Maine.
Heritage Action opposes re-authorizing the bank on the grounds that export financing is a matter for the private sector, not the federal government.
Bush and Rubio took that view on stage Friday, but Santorum volunteered his support for the bank, and referred to GE’s announcement.
Santorum said GE wouldn’t lose any money doing the turbine work in France instead of the United States.
“You know who’s going to lose money?” he said. “American workers.”